We are getting some web love regarding the February cover of Open Skies, which is all the more gratifying given it’s the first cover we have done in-house. The process was as follows: I started off wanting to use a particular type of yellow as we had not used it before on the cover (and the last time we used yellow at all was in issue one back in March last year). This is the first time I have started the cover process with a colour, but I was determined to make this shade of yellow work.

There are two types of covers you can have with a themed issue (as all our issues are). A cover that relates to the general theme of the issue (see here) or one that focuses on a specific article within the issue (see here). Most of our covers focus on the general theme – as we are not on the news stand, we don’t have to rely on multiple cover lines to grab attention, and if you focus on one feature on the cover, you will need a cover line.

For this issue, I wanted to do something different – to focus on some of the features inside the issue without being too explicit about those features. So, inspired by the buttons on the Sony Playstation handset, I asked Roui (our ace designer) to come up with some logos. The DeLorean car was easy, the Super Mario Bros. icon was also self evident. For the Silicon Valley piece, we went with a retro Apple Mac, and the final logo is from the design of the Tim Ferriss piece, which happened pretty late in the day.

Roui then added a filter to the icons to give them a slightly retro look (nothing worse than a tech cover full of shine and ‘newness’) and placed them on the page. I like to keep things minimal whenever possible, and so shrunk the icons and added a no-fuss/no serif font. It is tempting to be too clever on the cover page when it comes to the cover line, so we kept it simple: The Technology Issue. We had few other options we sent to Emirates, but they also preferred this version.

And there it is, one of the best parts of the job, choosing a cover. Next month (Our London issue) will see us doing something completely different again. Stay tuned.